I HAVE watched the uprising against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election as President of Iran with mounting guilt.

Men and women have surged onto the streets in support of Hossein Mousavi and other moderate candidates in spite of government threats, arrests and actual violence against them.

Several people have died and yet still they come to fight for the right to make their vote count. At our last general election in 2005, only a proportion of the electorate voted.

A lot of people didn’t bother and yes, I admit I’ve abstained more than once out of sheer distaste for everything on offer. Lately I’ve been asking myself if abstention is an option.

The past few weeks have seen voters in Britain more energised than I can ever remember but will that make them turn out when the election comes? Would they be prepared to take to the streets and face bullets and batons if they felt an election had been rigged? I doubt it. We have become a nation of carpers and grumblers mired in apathy.

Oh for a fraction of the passion and courage and love of liberty being exhibited on the streets of Tehran.

We might be having problems here but nothing like in Uganda As you are reading, I will be arriving in Kampala, capital of Uganda, to revisit some of the places and children I visited in 2004.

Uganda, known as the “Pearl of Africa,” is a beautiful, fertile country made up of various ethnic groups. English is the official language but there are more than 40 languages spoken throughout the country. Between 800,000 and two million people perished during the dictatorship of Idi Amin and its aftermath and, for the past two decades, the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has forced an estimated 30,000 children into armed conflict and sex slavery. However, Uganda has made huge strides in defeating Aids and I’m hoping to see further improvements this time.

I’ll meet my sponsored child, Mercy, again but the high spot of my visit will be a reunion with Fred and Emmanuel, two boys orphaned by Aids when they were seven and three.

They had clung together and survived against all odds and were 11 and seven when I met them in 2004. They’re still surviving alone but attending school and living in a brick house built with money raised here in Britain after my visit. They are bowled over by the fact that it has a latrine!

When did you last feel privileged to have sanitation? We really are lucky to live as we do, recession or no recession.

Iraq War Inquiry secrets will be left in a taxi, of course - next page Ugly racism rears its head as pressure grows - next page X Factor stars are just what the doctor ordered - next page

Iraq War Inquiry secrets will be left in a taxi, of course

I’m finding it hard to get worked up about the Iraq War Inquiry being held in secret.

Of course, we need to know the absolute truth and nothing less and that means seeing the full, unexpurgated conclusion of the inquiry but even if it’s kept from us at first, it won’t be long before someone has sold a copy to a newspaper or a civil servant has left his laptop containing the full report in a taxi. All we have to do is be patient.Ugly racism rears its head as pressure grows

Ugly racism rears its head as pressure grows THE pictures of Romanian families, clearly afraid as they ran from the mob in Northern Ireland, were not pleasant.

The sight of frightened children stumbling along or clutched in their parents’ arms was near unbearable. There is no excuse for such persecution but we need to look at what has brought out this racist streak in normally law-abiding citizens.

The answer seems to be jobs and housing, with fear about numbers thrown in.

If we had lots of jobs chasing applicants and social housing available for all, if people believed there was a system efficiently controlling entry to this country, my guess is we would continue to assimilate different races as we have always done.

The trouble is no one has any faith in immigration controls and, in any case, membership of the EU negates most of them. Europeans are entitled to come here and come they will.

The job situation will hopefully ease as the recession eases but will there ever be enough to go round?

As for social housing, the sooner we look at schemes to make sure there is housing available for those who need it and a workable system to move them on when they are no longer in need, we will have resentment if those born here see “foreigners” housed while they are living in squalor.

I don’t suppose anyone can come up with an instant solution but I hope someone is working on one. I don’t want to see more pictures like that.

X Factor stars are just what the doctor ordered Auditions for The X Factor begin this week in front of live audiences in venues around the country.

Magazines are awash with speculation about rivalry between Cheryl Cole and Dannii Minogue, whether Louis Walsh secretly hates Simon Cowell and what exactly the enigmatic Mr Cowell is plotting next.

It’s easy to dismiss X Factor as just another modern version of throwing Christians to lions, only this time set to music. But last week I had reason to think again.

A little girl seriously ill in hospital over a protracted period was visited by the touring company of last year’s X Factor finalists.

It meant the world to her to have her heroes, only seen on screen, there at her bedside. In fact it perked her up no end. This year I’m going to make a real effort to watch in the hope there’s some therapeutic effect there for me. I might even manage not to watch it from between my fingers.